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Cleaning Your Pc For Junk Files Residing In The Hard Drive

To run your computer smoothly, it is necessary that your computer hard drive must be free from any junk files and other erroneous files. These files are accumulated in the hard drive and make you wait for long to start your pc and also make the system slow. These files are though very important as they contains the information

Author: Kay Brenner
Date: Jan 15, 2010 - 5:50:31 AM

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Tidying Up your PC

A pal of mine called me up a while back and proclaimed that her PC had died on her; it was extremely sluggish and would often freeze if you looked at it the wrong way.   She brought her PC over to my house, and I attempted to get down to the heart of the matter.   I was appalled at how much junk she had loaded onto her PC’s hard drive. Her desktop was a chaotic soup of icons strewn about all over the place.   No wonder why her PC was being rebellious.   Worst of all, she was apprehensive of the fact that her PC was quickly running out of storage space.   Not being a computer science major, she professed her ignorance of simple uninstall operations and other basic computer functions.  Basically, she just wanted me to tidy up her PC’s hard drive, freeing up storage space in the process.

Does this story sound remotely familiar?   It certainly isn’t uncommon by any means.   The sheer amount of games, mp3s and other computer files is enough to make the average user go on a downloading spree.   But, alas, hard drive space is finite, and if you don’t watch your limit and do a little cleaning every once in a while, you may find yourself without much storage space left.   As you peruse the multitude of folders on your hard drive, ask yourself this question: do I really need this program/game/video/image/mp3 on my hard drive?   A little spring cleaning can go a long way.

Removing Old Programs

It’s a common misconception that by simply deleting a program’s icon from the desktop, it’ll automatically be deleted from your PC’s hard drive.   Windows shortcuts are nothing more than files that point to a program’s location somewhere on your computer’s hard drive; so, when one deletes a program’s shortcut, only the shortcut is removed, not the program the shortcut points to.   Another mistake many novice users perform is entering Windows’ Program Files Folder, and deleting an application’s folder, thinking that this is a clean way to uninstall said program; out of sight, out of mind is the logic here, but this is still a messy way to take out an application from your PC.

Before you even start the cleanup process, you must decide which programs you’d like to purge from your system.   Which programs do you seldom use?   Perhaps there’s a program that you installed long ago, decided you didn’t like it, and, like the procrastinator that lurks within each of use, put off removing it until another day; well, today’s the day!   Games and shareware usually fall into this category, as a lot of these types of programs can be installed for a trial period.   Once the trial period has expired, then there’s really no sense in keeping the program on your hard drive, is there?  

Also, it’s quite common for users to upgrade their digital camera, printer, graphics card, sound card, you name it.   But once you upgrade your equipment, what happens to the software that came bundled with your older hardware?   Well, it’s still on your hard drive, and since you’re no longer going to use it, it’s perfectly logical to do away said software from your PC, freeing up hard drive space in the process.   Sure, hard drive space is cheap and plentiful now-a-days, but that doesn’t mean you should squander it senselessly!

Uninstalling: The Process

There are usually two ways to uninstall an application you no longer need.   If you navigate to the application’s start menu group, there’s usually an uninstall icon that’ll take out the program from your PC if clicked.   Most applications/games will make this icon plainly visible, but there are always exceptions.   I’m always annoyed at programs that don’t provide an uninstall option in their start menu group.

Well, there’s always the trusty “Add/Remove Programs” ( aka ‘Program and Features’ in Windows Vista) option in Windows’ handy Control Panel; I usually just go here because it’s easier.   Sometimes, when you uninstall an application, you’ll receive a message box that warns you that one of the program’s files may be shared by another program, and it’ll ask you whether you’d like to keep or discard it.   It’s always safe to opt to keep these files, as you don’t want to break the dependent program; these files are usually very small and don’t produce a big foot print on your hard drive.

A lot of applications and games can be downloaded from the web; most of them are bundled in a single .exe or .zip file.   Once you’ve installed the program, you no longer need the .exe or .zip file, so it’s wise to delete the installation file, as you can always download it again if you need it at a later date.

Purging with Disk Cleanup

Windows provides a tool aptly named “Disk Cleanup” that’ll clear up even more precious hard drive space.   Open up an instance of Windows Explorer, right tap on one of your hard drives, and select the properties item; next, select Disk Cleanup.   Disk Cleanup does a wonderful job at analyzing your hard drive and will let you know how much space it can clear up, if any.

 

View all articles by Kay Brenner

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